


something blue

by renaissance



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Humor, Lots of other characters not listed who aren't as important, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-06
Updated: 2013-07-06
Packaged: 2017-12-17 21:31:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/872174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renaissance/pseuds/renaissance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the JB Online Ficathon for Desi's prompt: <i>Brienne and Jaime are Maid of Honor and Best Man at a wedding. Everything would go smoothly if they only just got along</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	something blue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> So this got majorly out of hand. It's late so I won't bore you with an essay but basically this started as a small idea for a prompt fill and ended up as this damn thing, and as an attempt to deconstruct a couple of tropes that run rampant in this fandom. I'd forgotten how much I enjoy writing funny things, although the humourous content is dubious and at the mercy of your judgement. This is pretty cheesy and pretty silly and probably disgustingly OOC and I hope you enjoy it :')

Jaime finds out before anyone else when Tyrion calls him at six in the morning. It’s still dark out and he’s in bed, reaching for the phone blindly and rolling onto the floor. He tangles his feet in the blinds but manages to press the answer button before the caller stops trying.

“I’m getting married.”

“Poor Sansa.”

Tyrion hangs up.

Jaime laughs for a good five minutes, until he’s wheezing and there are tears in the corners of his eyes. He’s probably woken the neighbours, and that thought only serves to amuse him further, but somehow he extracts his feet from the blinds and emerges unscathed. He walks slowly to the kitchen but before he can even think about whether he can be bothered making toast or not his phone rings again.

“Brother,” he says. “I am _truly_ sorry.”

“No you’re not,” Tyrion snaps.

“No, I’m not,” Jaime admits.

Tyrion sighs, and it crackles in Jaime’s ear. “You’ll be my best man, though, won’t you.”

It’s not a question but Jaime answers anyway. “I’ll be your _worst_ man,” he mutters, and he can hear Tyrion stifling a laugh.

“That’s all I ask.”

  


Brienne has “lunch with Sansa” pencilled into her diary, so she always knew it was going to be an eventful day, but she was not prepared for her best friend to tell her all in one breath that she’s getting married and that she wants Brienne to be her maid of honour.

“Sansa, I– I’m flattered but– surely you want someone else? Someone who looks good in a dress?”

Sansa laughs. “Brienne, do you really think I care what you look like in a dress?”

“I’ll look ridiculous,” Brienne points out.

Sansa shrugs. “You’ll be fine.”

“I don’t know,” Brienne says, “I’ve never done anything like this before.”

“There’s a first time for everything,” Sansa says.

“I’ll probably mess up.”

“Look, if you don’t want to do it, you can just say.”  
  
Brienne looks down at the menu to hide her embarrassment. “I just don’t think I’d do a very good job,” she says quietly.

“You will,” Sansa says, “I’ll make sure you do. Besides, I wouldn’t trust the task to anyone else.”

  


Tyrion forces Jaime to buy a new suit for the occasion, even though, _yes, I know, you already have plenty of good suits_ , but this is different. Everyone ought to buy a new suit for a wedding, Tyrion says, and Jaime points out that not everyone is as rich as a Lannister, but he agrees anyway, because he could never reasonably object to a new suit.

“Are you sure you’ll turn me away at the door if I wear this?” Jaime asks, brandishing a bright red tie with small golden dots in Tyrion’s face. “It’s very _me_.”

“Red at weddings is distasteful,” Tyrion says with a frown. “If you _must_ show off your Lannister loyalty, at least wear gold.”

“As the groom commands,” Jaime says, bowing deeply. He puts the red tie away with one last longing glance and cycles through the yellow ones instead. Tyrion may call them gold, but they’re definitely yellow. Jaime has always looked awful in yellow – it clashes with his hair. Still, he’d rather not disappoint Tyrion on his wedding day so he picks the least offensive tie and slings it over his shoulder.

He’s being fitted for a suit when Tyrion drops the news.

“You know Sansa’s asked Brienne to be her maid of honour.”

Jaime shrugs. “What’s it to me?”

“I don’t want the two of you fighting,” Tyrion says.

“Look, Tyrion, I don’t like the woman, but I’m not going to start a punch-up at your wedding.”

Tyrion only nods, and Jaime can tell he doesn’t believe a word of it.

  


Brienne’s never been in a bridal shop before, and up until the point that she stepped through the door she had thought that she never would be. It was hard to be as ugly as she was and imagine oneself in a bridesmaid’s outfit, let alone a wedding dress.

She was there with Sansa and all the bridesmaids – Sansa’s sister Arya, and her friends Jeyne, Margaery and Myranda.

“I’m envisaging a pastel rainbow,” Sansa says, hand on her chin in deliberation.

 _That could work_ , Brienne thinks, _if I’m the blue end of the rainbow_.

“I’ll take blue!” Myranda says immediately, and Brienne can feel any last vestiges of curiosity and maybe even eagerness fleeing out the way she entered.

In the end, they decide on blue for Myranda, green for Margaery, yellow for Arya, orange for Jeyne... and pink for Brienne.

“You look beautiful in pink,” Sansa assures her. “Plus, the most delicate colour ought to be reserved for the maid of honour, since she stands closest to the bride.”

“If you say so,” Brienne says, staring at herself in the mirror. What she doesn’t say is that with her pink skin and freckles she looks kind of like one of those plastic sashimi dishes in the window display at a Japanese take-away.

“We’ll get your hair done up,” Sansa adds. Like that’ll make a difference.

  


Somehow Jaime manages to avoid bumping into her right up until the wedding rehearsal, even though they work in the same office block. She’s down on one of the bottom floors in accounts or marketing or one of those lesser branches of the company, while he’s up on the penultimate floor in management, so they never really see each other anyway, but sometimes she’s up on his floor for no good reason, or they pass at the cafeteria, and exchange a few rude words and a lot of glares.

But there would be no avoiding her at the rehearsal, and as he stands in the foyer of the function hall waiting for the whole thing to start, he finds himself looking for her arrival.

She’s there before Sansa, standing awkwardly with the Tyrell girl, stooping to talk to her. Jaime can’t help but laugh. They’d put her in pink! He walks straight towards her with the clear goal of mocking the living daylights out of her costume.

“Tarth,” he calls. “I see you managed to find your way out of accounts for the day.”

“I work in IT, Lannister,” she hisses. Oh, right.

“Well, either way, I’m surprised to see you out in the world. It must have taken a lot of persuasion for the institution to let you leave.”

“Very funny,” she says, looking at her feet.

“Now tell me,” he continues, never one to back down, “what would you call that colour you're wearing? Baby pink? Cherry blossom? Orchid in the mist?”

“Salmon,” she says, jerking her head up to glare at him.

Margaery frowns. “I liked ‘cherry blossom’.”

“Well it doesn't matter,” Brienne says quickly.

“Either way,” Jaime says, “you’d look better in any colour other than that.”

“Your tie clashes with your hair,” she retorts. “Maybe if you worried less about what I’m wearing you'd have noticed that.”

He momentarily glances down, and immediately regrets it, because Brienne has a small but self-satisfied smile on her face, and he knows that she knows that he knows that the tie doesn’t work. He tries to give her a look, his kind of vaguely intimidating smile that screams I’m Better Than You, but she’s won, so he just shrugs and walks off.

Well, that could have gone better.

  


Brienne has to follow Sansa down the aisle, and even though they’re just doing the rehearsal at a local function hall, she’s afraid she’ll trip on her dress – or worse, _Sansa’s_ dress – and ruin the whole thing. And to make matters worse, she can’t stop thinking about Jaime bloody Lannister and his stupid rude awful comment about the pink dress. The worst part? He was _right_. The dress was lovely, but it looked ridiculous on Brienne and everyone knew it.

He was just the only one who would say it aloud.

Sansa cycles through a couple of iterations for the way that her bridesmaids would follow her, pivoting on Brienne in the centre, before she lets them try the walk down the aisle. By the time they’re ready to walk, Brienne is sure they’ve gone through every possible permutation. But in the end it’s a V-shaped formation, Brienne right behind Sansa, Arya and Jeyne behind her, Margaery and Myranda behind them.

They walk slowly, stomachs in and chests out, chins raised high and looking straight ahead. It takes Brienne a couple of tries to get the Don’t Look At Your Feet part right, but after a while she’s doing okay. It’s not like she has to wear heels, anyway. Sansa spared her that particular tribulation, given that she already towers over everyone else in the room, save for Jaime, only an inch shorter than her.

After what feels like an eternity of perilously measured steps, she’s standing by Sansa’s side at the makeshift altar, the pastel rainbow from pink to blue formed to her left.

“And then we say our vows, et cetera,” Tyrion says. He steps away from the scene to survey it, and after a moment Sansa joins him. “What do you think, my dear? Is everything in the right place?”

Sansa takes her time before answering, walking up and down the aisle to see them from different angles.

“I think they need flower crowns!” she exclaims, grinning at her bridesmaids. Brienne feels herself shrink at the thought of leaves and petals in her hair, which already looks enough like a bird’s nest as it is.

She leaves the function hall alone, choosing not to be involved in the flower crown consultation. She’ll wear whatever they give her at this stage.

The last thing she hears before she gets in her car is Jaime Lannister telling his brother that he’s considering picking out a different tie.

  


Tyrion’s stag night is at a nightclub in the city, a kind of seedy venue that his seedy friend Bronn suggested, but there’s no denying it’s extravagant, which suits Tyrion just fine. Jaime worries sometimes that he’ll go back to his womanising ways, but of course he believes his brother when he says he’s finally settled down. Still, he gets a twinge of fear when they walk into the club and there are half-naked women dancing on tables, their breasts threatening to spill out of their size-too-small bikini tops.

That stuff has never interested him, anyway.

As if he can read Jaime’s mind, Tyrion turns to him and sighs. “Don’t worry. I’ll resist any drunken temptation.”

“I’ll be watching you,” Jaime says, warning him like he’s always done, being the overprotective big brother. (He can’t help it.)

The thing is, he doesn’t end up watching Tyrion. Tyrion’s always had a lot of friends to keep him company, whereas Jaime can count the number of people he considers to be true friends on one hand and zero fingers. Tyrion’s always had a good head for drink too, despite his stature, downing beer after beer and doing shots with the best of them while Jaime feels his head spinning after one glass of wine. He doesn’t even like wine.

Still, Tyrion’s footing the bill so the drinks are on the house, so he orders a second.

“Finally, some proof that you’re not teetotal!” Tyrion declares. “I was beginning to get worried.”

“Don’t let it trouble you,” Jaime says.

“Don’t let it trouble _you_ ,” Tyrion replies, holding out his glass. “A toast! To my brother drinking!”

Jaime laughs along with the rest of them.

  


They’ve got a comfortable table in the corner, but Brienne still feels all cramped, tucking her legs under her chair out of fear of knocking into anyone else. She’s been friends with some of these girls for years, but she still feels out of place, sitting in the Italian eatery with her meatlover’s pizza while they daintily twirl their tagliatelle and abstain from adding extra cheese.

It’s a hen night, so she’s pretty sure there are meant to be hunky male strippers and copious quantities of alcohol, but this is Sansa, and she’s all about being faithful to her partner and delicate, healthy food, so they’re at a restaurant.

Naturally Brienne is holding back from entering the conversation. There are some women there she doesn’t know, Sansa’s friends from work probably, and she doesn’t want to make a fool of herself in front of them. They’re all talking about their boyfriends, or their husbands, or their children, or their careers, and Brienne can’t really contribute to any of that, except for “career” maybe, but she’s sure that none of them want to hear about the thrilling life of an IT assistant who spends her days telling men who think they know better that they could probably solve the problem by saving all their work and restarting the computer.

And they _definitely_ don’t want to hear about her astonishing lack of boyfriend.

She could really go for a glass of something alcoholic right about now, but out of deference to the elephant in the room known as Tyrion’s Drinking Problem she’s sticking to lemon, lime and bitters, desperately trying to taste the 0.0001% alcohol lurking in the bitters.

It’s not working.

  


Jaime told himself he would stop at two glasses of wine, and yet here he is setting aside his sixth. _This was definitely a bad idea_.

He glances across the nightclub to where Tyrion is, chatting with Bronn and a few other friends that Jaime doesn’t recognise, and one of the dancers, and he thinks that they won’t notice if he just... slips out for a bit...

He stumbles in the doorway and staggers onto the sidewalk, the glare of the streetlamp catching him by surprise. The fresh air is a blessing and he takes deep breaths to steady himself. Fumbling in his pocket, he pulls out his phone and blindly dials his sister’s number.

“Cersei, you’d be so proud of me,” he breathes into the phone. “I’m off my face!”

“That makes two of us,” she slurs, and he realises that he’s nowhere near as drunk as her.

“Where are you?”

“Home. Where else?”

“Didn’t Sansa invite you to her hen night?”

Cersei laughs, and Jaime cringes.

“Okay, fair enough. Ask a stupid question...”

“... get a stupid answer,” she finishes. “How’s our stunted little pervert brother’s excuse for a party going?”

Jaime hangs up.

He scrolls through his contact list until he’s stalled by “Girl From IT”, and he vaguely remembers noting down her number from the company intranet the other day. He hits call.

  


It’s only about eleven but the night is drawing to a close. Sansa’s never been one for late nights, and even though it’s a Friday, some of her friends have work in the morning. They’re sharing stories over small slices of cake and a single scoop of gelato each, and Brienne is now not only wishing for a good drink, but also for a bucket of chocolate ice cream and something decent on the telly.

And then her phone rings.

It’s an unknown number but she jumps on the excuse, boredom giving her the unprecedented courage to lie.

“Sansa, I’m so sorry, it’s my father, I’ll talk to you tomorrow...”

They say a very hasty goodbye and as she makes her way out Brienne picks up the phone. Whoever is calling her, father or otherwise, clearly _wants_ to talk to her, because it’s definitely been a minute since it began to ring and they haven’t given up yet. That, or it’s a wrong number.

“Hello?”

“Ah, Brienne, just the person I was hoping to speak to!”

She grimaces, stopping at the curb just outside the restaurant. “Lannister. What do you want?”

“I’ve got a problem with my computer,” he says, sounding like a whiny child.

“How did you even get my number?”

“Company intranet,” he says hastily. “Anyway that’s not the point. I’ve got this USB and it’s _full_ of files that I _really_ need to get off it. But the thing is, it’s a special type of USB that doesn’t fit in any hole I can access, I don’t think... do you think you could, maybe, help me find somewhere to _insert_ it?”

“Is it a Micro-USB?”

“No, I want to have sex with you.”

There’s a pause, and she can practically taste his inebriation through the phone.

“I’ve got a really nice penthouse apartment,” he adds, a desperate note to his voice.

Brienne sighs. “Do you have any ice cream?”

 

Jaime shows up to the wedding in a pale pink tie. “Orchids in the mist” pink, perhaps. Tyrion doesn’t say anything when his limo picks Jaime up from outside his apartment block, just raises an eyebrow.

There’s an unspoken rule that the groom must arrive first, to greet all the guests, point out which side of the aisle they’re to be seated, and then walk up to the altar to await his bride’s arrival. Jaime’s always hated traditional weddings. He thinks that if he ever gets married, he’ll do it in a registry office, sign some papers and then whisk his bride away for a honeymoon in their bedroom faster than you can say “awkward family luncheon”. But Tyrion and Sansa are the traditional types, and on top of that Sansa’s religious, so they’re doing it “properly”.

Jaime stands at Tyrion’s right hand, greeting the guests and trying not to laugh every time one of them bends down to shake Tyrion’s hand. The parade goes on for what feels like a few hours, the monotony only broken with the arrival of Sansa’s parents, with whom the Lannisters have always had an uneasy relationship. Jaime gets a good laugh out of their discomfort, but they’re on good terms with Tyrion so the fun will only truly begin once they’re amidst the Lannister brood at the lunch after the wedding. Cersei and Tywin have graced Tyrion with their presence, but only just. Throwing those two in amongst the Starks would be a year’s worth of laughter.

Once the guests have been seated Jaime follows his brother up the aisle and stands by his side at the altar.

“Nervous?” he asks.

Tyrion exhales. “Not a bit.”

“Liar.”

The doors open and suddenly everyone is silent, and Sansa enters. And yes, of course, she looks delightful, but Jaime’s eyes are drawn to the excessively tall maid of honour behind her, and his eyes follow her down the aisle.

They’ve done Brienne’s hair up quite nicely, and it looks less like a haystack than usual (flower crown notwithstanding), but other than that she’s completely out of place. Her shoulders are too broad for the dainty pink dress and she walks like she’s carrying a vat of boiling oil, and as she gets closer he notices the foundation that does nothing to disguise her freckles and the reddish tint in her eyeshadow that is in complete incongruity with her bright blue eyes.

He clenches his teeth and forces himself to look away. _Think about something else_. He would not let it be said that Jaime Lannister had pitched a tent in the front garden while acting best man at his little brother’s wedding.

  


Brienne had spent the morning with Sansa and the other bridesmaids, having her hair straightened and then curled and then smothered in gel to create the “perfect” up-do. And then they’d ruined it by placing that ridiculous garland on top. Still, she can't bring herself to complain.

Whereas Brienne's flower crown is mostly pink to match her dress, Sansa’s is the whole pastel rainbow, accounting for her “something blue”. She looks the perfect bride, and it almost makes up for Brienne's utter discomfort to see her best friend looking so happy, and beautiful to boot.

She tries not to think about the fact that Sansa isn’t the only one walking down the aisle. When Brienne was younger she used to imagine her dream wedding, long before she realised that she looked bad in dresses and that boys would never be interested in her, not unless they were pulling a prank. Now her dream wedding is Sansa’s wedding, and she needs for everything to go off without a hitch. So as she follows down the aisle, she walks with such caution that would put a tightrope artist to shame.

The ceremony feels slow. She doesn’t notice that Jaime Lannister is wearing a tie that matches her dress almost perfectly, and she tries not to catch his eye as Sansa and Tyrion read their vows. And she _definitely_ doesn't return his smile when the newlyweds kiss at the end of the ceremony.

There’s cheering when it’s all over, and Sansa is married, and she and her husband practically run back the way they entered to leave the church. They stand outside to address the crowd, and Brienne moves towards the back.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Tyrion calls out, “thank you all for joining us on this day.”

Jaime sidles up to Brienne, tapping her on the shoulder. “So you survived the ceremony, then.”

“A small party will be remaining for photos,” Tyrion continues, “after which we will all congregate for a late lunch at the restaurant in the gardens.”

“I don’t suppose you’ll be looking forward to the photos,” Jaime whispers. “Well, not in that dress, anyway.”

She ignores him.

“But first,” Sansa says from the front of the crowd, “the bouquet!”

Brienne reflexively takes a step back as Sansa tosses her flowers into the crowd, while several people flock to catch it, and there’s an excited yell from the girl who manages to get a hold of it, groans from others.

“Oh, pity,” Jaime says, no sympathy in his voice, “you didn't catch it!”

Brienne gives a quiet grunt in response. She is _not_ going to engage in conversation with this man.

“You could have been the next blushing bride,” he teases. “Now that would be a sight...”

“Not in this dress,” she snaps, storming away from him to the small area where the photos will be taken.

  


Jaime had expected a superior brand of awkwardness, and the photos do not disappoint. The parents of the bride and the parents of the groom are forced to stand side by side, and the photographer has a hard time hiding his curiosity at their pained expressions. Brienne looks hilarious, too. She stands kind of like a canned sardine, forcing her limbs inwards to make herself as small and unnoticeable as possible.

It doesn’t work.

Lunch is at a restaurant in the botanical gardens, not far from the church, which boasts a huge dining hall that Tyrion had rented out for the lunch. It’s been done up for the occasion with round tables, about ten seats each, and a dancefloor area in one corner. Jaime is seated at the packed head table, squeezed in alongside Tyrion and Sansa, Cersei and Tywin, and Sansa’s mother and siblings. And Brienne.

“I don’t know what _she’s_ doing here,” Cersei whispers to him as they take their seats.

Jaime knows who she’s talking about but he feigns confusion. “Who?”

“That big, ugly woman,” his sister says, her mouth twisting grotesquely. “She has no place at this table.”

“She was the maid of honour,” Jaime says. “Do you really expect them to–”

He cuts off as Brienne sits down right across from him.

“Do I really expect them to _what_?” Cersei asks.

“Never mind,” he mutters.

He doesn’t look at her throughout the whole meal. Cersei’s right – she’s big and ugly and... well, there had been That Night. But he is definitely not going to think about that, and he is not going to get drunk enough to think about it either.

But then suddenly the food is gone and he no longer has any excuse to avoid talking to anyone.

It’s Catelyn Stark who starts the conversation. “Brienne, I heard you were recently promoted. Or is that just a rumour?”

Brienne blushes. “N-no, it’s not a rumour,” she says, poking at her empty plate with a fork.

“So you _are_ Head of IT?”

She nods, and Jaime looks up, eyes wide. “Head of IT? Since when?”

“Only a week,” Brienne says quietly. “Selmy retired, remember?”

“Right,” he says. He hadn’t actually heard of Selmy’s retirement, but it makes sense – when he’d copied Brienne’s number from the intranet Selmy was still listed as the Head of Department, but that had been some weeks ago now. “So how did you manage to get the job?”

“I was _offered_ the job,” she says, looking almost a little hurt.

“Alright, alright, no need to get touchy,” Jaime says.

“I was not _getting touchy_ ,” she begins, but Catelyn cuts her off with a hand on her arm.

“Don’t waste your time arguing with him,” she whispers, and Jaime feels irrationally angry.

“Time for the cake!” Sansa announces loudly, standing up and signalling to a waiter, and stalling any possibility of getting into an argument.

  


The cake is great. It really is. Brienne tries her hardest to be enthusiastic but she’s just not feeling it, not right after Jaime has just _questioned the entire validity of her job_. It’s infuriating, that someone like him can just treat her like a child because he works on a higher level of the building than she does. Clearly he’s a _big deal_ and Brienne is, oh, just the new _Head of IT_ , nothing special!

She’s seething with repressed anger when the music starts playing and the guests are invited to the dancefloor. Of course, Sansa and Tyrion take to the floor first, and young, insensitive Rickon makes some silly comment about their height difference, but not until they’re out of his earshot. Brienne wishes she were still young and insensitive, because she’d have a thing or two to say to Jaime Lannister.

“Aren’t you gonna dance?” Arya asks her.

“No, I don’t think so,” Brienne says. “I can hardly move in this dress.” It’s a weak excuse and they both know it, but it’s better than saying “no because I look like a distressed hippopotamus when I try to dance and I will trip and land in the cake and ruin the day”.

“Not even if your boyfriend asks you?” Arya asks, raising an eyebrow.

“My– _what_?”

Arya gestures at Jaime. “You mean you’re not... ?”

“No!”

“Okay,” Arya says, but she sounds dubious. She wanders off to the dancefloor, now that the music has shifted away from ballroom-style tunes to mindless pop. Arya is only two years younger than Brienne and Sansa, but Brienne feels as though she is apparently still ignorant as to how romance works. Generally, if two people are not on good terms with one another, then they’re _not a couple_.

She’s not going to think about That Night.

As if on cue, Jaime takes the vacant seat next to her. “Not dancing?”

“Not in this dress,” she repeats, using the same excuse as she used on Arya and wondering when he will get the message that the dress she is wearing is the source of all her problems and could he please stop drawing her attention to it.

“That’s no excuse,” he says, standing up. “Come on. Let’s dance.”

Brienne stands up too, but only because the extra height gives her an advantage in any conversation with Jaime.

“I am _not_ dancing,” she says through her teeth, “and even if I did, which I’m _not_ , I would _never_ dance with _you_!”

“You’re missing out,” he says.

“Coming from the man who belittles me in front of other people and takes every opportunity to make fun of me, then, no, I _don’t_ think I’m missing out!”

“Oh, I make fun of you, do I? I belittle you? What about your comments about the tie I wore at the wedding rehearsal?”

“That was one time! What about everything you’ve said about my dress?”

“It’s a hideous dress and it looks awful on you? What am I supposed to say?”

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you that if you don’t have anything nice to say you shouldn’t say anything at all?”

“Then surely you would have remembered that advice when you called my penis 'micro' and got drunk on cheap sherry and spent a whole night making rude comments about my apartment’s decor and _eating all my ice cream_!”

Their voices had been raising gradually, building to the peak of the argument, but now they are both quiet.

“We don’t talk about That Night,” Brienne says quietly. "And... I thought you were talking about an actual computer problem." She realises that her hands are raised in front of her, as though she’s about to give him a shove. That’s probably why Tyrion is walking over to them with a murderous look on his face.

  


Jaime would probably be laughing if it were happening to anyone else, but as Tyrion approaches him and Brienne all he can do is bite his lip.

“I told you to try and get along with Brienne,” Tyrion snaps, looking up at him with a mixture of anger and disappointment. “But you couldn’t do this _one thing_ , to keep your mouth shut and let this be a pleasant occasion, for once, could you? You really can’t be trusted with anything. I don’t know why I even invited any Lannisters to–”

“Tyrion,” Brienne interrupts. “It’s as much my fault as it is Jaime’s. I’m really, truly sorry.”

Tyrion turns to her and his expression softens. Jaime notices that people are staring, and he feels like a curiosity. Haven’t this crowd ever seen an argument before?

“Brienne,” Tyrion says, “you and my brother don’t get on, and that’s fine, no-one is forcing you. But having said that... I want you both to go outside and sort it out. Don’t come back until you can talk to each other without starting World War Three.”

She looks at her feet and nods. Jaime almost feels sorry for her, but then he reminds himself that she’s as much as fault as he is. They got themselves into this together, and now he’s going to get them out of it.

“Fine,” he says. “We’ll go kiss and make up.”

Brienne looks furious at that, but follows him outside without a word.

They walk a bit in silence. After a while Jaime sits down on a bench amidst some rose bushes and Brienne tentatively joins him.

“I’m sorry for blowing up at you,” she says. “It was not good of me to do that. I’ve ruined their–”

“You haven’t ruined anything. If anything, I’ve ruined your whole ‘maid of honour experience’, or whatever.” He shrugs. “But for what it’s worth, I still don’t like the dress.”

Brienne laughs. It’s a small laugh, but it counts for something.

“And,” he continues, “I don’t think we should never talk about That Night again. It was fun, even if you did spend the whole time telling me how distasteful my apartment is.”

“Only because you live in it,” she says. She’s not laughing, but it’s there in her features. “Any other comments you’d like to rescind?”

“I don’t think so. I wasn’t joking when I said it was a pity you didn’t catch the bouquet.”

“You were joking,” she says. “I’m not cut out for marriage or weddings, really. There’s too much preening involved; I doubt I could go to this sort of effort again. Plus, like you said, I look terrible in a dress.”

He can’t believe how sad she sounds. “Well, I wasn’t joking. Look, even in this dress, you could get married right now.”

“That’s a joke,” she says. “You’re joking. It’s not even white!”

“But you’ve got something old– do you?”

“My shoes have seen a bit of use,” she admits. “It’s hard to find flats in my size.”

“Okay, and the dress is something new...”

“Where are you going with this?” she asks, eyeing him warily. “You’re not suggesting I walk back to the church, are you?”

“No,” he says. “I’m proving a point. You need something borrowed.”

“I don’t think I own this flower crown,” she says. “Or, I don’t _want_ to own it...”

“Not good enough.” He undoes his tie and places it around her neck, pulling it into a sloppy half-windsor. “See, it even matches.”

“Neither of us have anything blue,” she says. “Your point is invalid.”

“You’ve got your eyes,” Jaime says, before he can stop himself. She looks like she’s about to burst out laughing at him, either that or just get up and walk off, and he probably deserves it for such a corny one-liner, but she just shakes her head.

“Doesn’t count.”

He laughs. “So maybe you couldn’t get married right now. But that’s not never. It’s not like you’re ‘not cut out for it’, like you said. You don’t need to look good in frilly dresses to get married.”

No-one says anything when they walk back into the restaurant several minutes later, Jaime looking a little more self-satisfied than usual and Brienne, her flower crown slightly askew, wearing his tie.

  


Brienne’s still getting used to having her own office at work. She’s spent so long as one of the miscellaneous IT workers with a cubicle on the floor, but now that she’s in the top job she has the main perk that comes with it – social isolation.

Now that Sansa’s away on her honeymoon no-one texts her, and she can siphon off most of the petty computer issues to the juniors in the department, so she’s well and truly alone and unoccupied. It’s a peaceful Monday. She spends an hour playing solitaire because there are no emails coming in, but things quicken up after lunch.

And then, while she’s on the phone to someone from management about a possible weakness in his firewalls, there’s a knock on her office door. It’s frosted glass, so she can’t tell who it is, but it’s probably just Podrick. He’s the new kid and he always knocks when he’s got a problem – the rest just email her.

“I’m sorry, can you hold for a moment?” she says into the phone.

She opens the door slowly, and she notices that her colleagues are gaping at her visitor before she notices that her visitor is Jaime Lannister with a huge bouquet of the most tasteless blue flowers she has ever seen. He’s wearing the pink tie, and he gives her a sort of unapologetic shrug.

“You needed something blue,” he says.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please leave a comment and let me know what you think!
> 
> (I agonised for a good half hour over that ending. So, seriously. Feedback is so welcome.)


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